>> FAREWELL FAIL WHALE: Twitter's stock closes at $44.90 a share, up 73 percent on its first day, by Ben Popper: "A more conservative approach than Facebook leads to a big first day of gains... Shortly after trading began around 9:30 AM ET, Twitter's share price rocketed well past the $26 per share minimum the company set last night, opening up 74 percent at $45.10 to start the day. It finished the day right around the same spot, at $44.90. The minimum strike price of $26 allowed Twitter to raise at least $1.8 billion dollars from the initial offering, and gave the company a total valuation of roughly $14 billion. So Twitter potentially left about $1.25 billion on the table when they set the price of $26 a share last night." [Echo chamber: 1,800 posts] The Verge

>>>> Some analysts questioned how the market capitalization can be almost a quarter of Facebook's despite having just 8% of its revenuesFT (paywalled)

>> LEAK MASTER OF REDMOND: Microsoft CEO candidate Elop said to mull Windows shift, by Peter Burrows and Dina Bass: "Stephen Elop, a candidate to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft Corp.'s chief executive officer, would consider breaking with decades of tradition by focusing the company's strategy around making the popular Office software programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint available on a broad variety of smartphones and tablets, including those made by Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc., said three people with knowledge of his thinking." Bloomberg

>> PATSY DATA MINE: CIA is said to pay AT&T for call data, by Charlie Savage: "The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company's vast database of phone records, which includes Americans' international calls, according to government officials. The cooperation is conducted under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate... C.I.A. supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects, and AT&T searches its database and provides records of calls that may help identify foreign associates... company has a huge archive of data on phone calls, both foreign and domestic, that were handled by its network equipment, not just those of its own customers." New York Times (paywalled)

>> TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS: Time for Internet engineers to fight back against the 'Surveillance Internet,' by David Talbot: "Will the usually obscure Internet Engineering Task Force- - that open-to-anyone group of engineers who design and keep the 'net functioning' -- step up and fight back against mass surveillance? That possibility is now in the air, following a talk in Vancouver today by cryptographer Bruce Schneier. He laid partial responsibility of the National Security Agency's mass surveillance on the IETF's doorstep." MIT Technology Review

>> WILLIE SUTTON RULE: Hackers steal 4,100 Bitcoins worth $1.18M from wallet service Inputs.io, by Rebecca Grant: "Inputs.io powers a Bitcoin wallet service where owners can easily send and receive Bitcoin. It claimed to be the 'most secure wallet ever created' and lists 20 different measures it takes to protect the Bitcoins, including bcrypted passwords (a special encryption form based on Bruce Schneier's algorithm Blowfish), SSL encryption, location-based authorization, and a cold storage system. However, these measures were not enough, and on Oct. 26, hackers compromised the supposedly secure wallets." VentureBeat

>> GOOGLE WINGS: Google airport in San Jose to break ground in January, by Nathan Donato-Weinstein: "Signature Flight Support expects to break ground in January on a new, $82 million jet center at Mineta San Jose International Airport that will play home to Google's air force... The location is slated to include 270,000 square feet of hangar space on 29 acres. That would make it the largest so-called fixed base operator facility built in a single phase in the last 30 years." Silicon Valley Business Journal

>> WALLED GARDEN REVIVAL: Google bans Windows Chrome extensions found outside the Chrome Web Store, by Brad Chacos: "The sad march towards tribal fiefdoms continued Thursday, as Google announced that it will only allow Chrome for Windows users to download extensions hosted by Google's own Chrome Web Store starting in January. Google says the decision to transform Chrome into a gated community stems from security concerns, in an echo of the official reason that Microsoft moved to the Windows Store model to distribute modern UI apps." PCWorld

>> OVERLOOKED: PlayStation 4 gets Netflix and more at launch, but where's the music?, by Jared Newman: "Sony announced 11 entertainment apps that will be available at launch: Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, Crunchyroll, EPIX, Hulu Plus, NBA Game Time, Netflix, NHL GameCenter Live, Redbox Instant by Verizon, Vudu, YuppTV... missing a few major video apps, including WatchESPN, HBO Go and YouTube. The bigger omission is music, with not a single third-party music app on the list. " TechHive

>> COMING ATTRACTIONS: Internet Expolorer 11 officially hits Windows 7, by Devindra Hardawar: "No, it doesn't look any different from IE 10, and it doesn't bring over any of the visual flourishes from the touch-friendly Windows 8 version of IE 11, but it's a worthy upgrade for anyone sticking with Windows 7. Also, as a mandatory upgrade, Windows 7 users will eventually be forced to grab it." Venture Beat